


s12e09 coda

by noxlee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s12e09 First Blood, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 14:30:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9552872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxlee/pseuds/noxlee
Summary: Dean and Cas are both in a bad place after so many weeks apart. For once, they try using their words.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Possible TW for depression. Dean's headspace isn't great here, but when is it ever?
> 
> Feedback welcome!

The Winchesters are all exhausted by the time they make it back to the bunker. Sam and Mary both stumble off to their rooms almost immediately, but Dean lingers a moment.

“You’re staying, right?” Dean looks at Cas nervously. He needs to make sure.

Cas stares at him for a long moment before nodding silently.

Cas had said very little the whole way back to the bunker. When they had stopped at a diner for breakfast a few hours outside of Lebanon, Cas had declined to join them, saying he didn’t need to eat. He waited outside at the car, staring off into space with a terrible slump to his shoulders that made something in Dean ache. Indigestion, most likely. The greasy diner food had been hot and heavenly, but it was probably not sitting well after weeks on a prison diet. 

Dean hadn’t said much on the ride home either, though. He’d been too exhausted. They all had. Without meaning to he’d fallen asleep and when he woke up he’d been slumped against Cas, drooling all over his shoulder. He’d hurriedly sat upright and mumbled an apology, but Cas hadn’t seemed too bothered. He just sat there, stiffly, staring out the window and saying nothing.

Dean feels he should say something now that they're home. He wants to tell Cas that he missed him, that he… that he had spent the better part of the day fighting his way through another goddamn forest of things that wanted to kill him just so he could see Cas again one last time. He wants to tell Cas all the things that had been running through his head as he fought his way back to him. He figures he should probably say thank you at the very least, for saving his ass again, but of course that’s not what comes out.

“It was a stupid thing to do.” Dean says gruffly.

“Excuse me?” In a heartbeat, Cas has gone from quiet and sullen to outright pissy and, if Dean’s not mistaken, there’s a flash of anger in those blue eyes.  “It was fucking stupid and you know it. I don’t know what happens now, what the consequence for you are gonna be, but whatever it is it wasn’t worth it.”

“ _I_ made a stupid decision?” Cas stares at him incredulous. And okay, perhaps Dean isn’t the in the best position to be lecturing on stupid decisions. Cas stands up then, straightening to his full height, shoulders squared. There’s rage and power simmering in him, and Dean flinches. He always forgets. Always just thinks of Castiel as Cas, his dorky little friend, but he sees a glimpse again of the otherworldly creature and like always, the magnitude of it takes his breath away.

Then all at once it’s gone. Cas sighs deeply and his shoulders sag again. 

“You’ll always be worth it, Dean.” 

Dean doesn’t know what to say to that so he says nothing, sinking like a rock into the nearest chair.

“Did they hurt you?” Cas asks. 

“No. Not like that.”

Cas stares at him, speculative. “Was it really worse than hell?”  Dean remembers then that Cas had a front row seat to Dean’s time in hell. Cas saw him at his absolute worst when he was broken and bloody, his soul shred to pieces. He must think him crazy to have preferred 40 years in the depths of hell to six weeks in a prison cell with food and water, and where no one even laid a finger on him.

Dean’s not sure he’d be able to explain it. At least in hell the pain was a distraction but in the cell there was nothing but himself. Dean could handle the rack in hell, could stare down demons and monsters and everything scary that goes bump in the night. He wasn’t afraid of anything, not even of death. But he couldn’t fucking sit in a prison cell alone with himself. 

“Dean?”  Cas asked him a question, but he can’t remember it. He sounds so far away. All he can think about are the walls of that cell closing in on him, suffocating him, leaving him alone with his thoughts that cycled through an endless reel of his biggest fuck ups and all the ways he’d let down the people he loved.

Cas crouches down in front of Dean, and places one firm hand on his knee, grounding him. Dean looks up, startled, and Cas reaches out his other hand. With a single finger, he begins to trace the freckles on Dean’s face with such tenderness that Dean has to shut his eyes against all of it; all the concern and care and gentleness. There’s no way he’s worth this. Cas is ancient, powerful, immortal. Dean is just a fuckup and should have been dead many times over already. Cas has ripped up the script again, and gambled with cosmic consequences and all for what?

A single finger turns into a warm palm as Cas cups Dean’s jaw and strokes his cheek with his thumb. Such a feather light touch and yet Dean can feel it all the way down to his toes as he realizes he’s trembling. He hadn’t been aware of just how desperate he’d been for touch after so long without it. How desperate he had been for Cas.

When he finally gets a handle on himself, manages to reel his emotions back in, he opens his eyes and is alarmed to see that Cas is crying. He stares into blue eyes, swimming with hurt and sadness and… something else. 

“You were going to leave me,” Cas mutters. “Again.”

And fuck if Dean’s heart doesn’t shatter to pieces.“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Dean can’t stop the tears now either.

“Were you even going to say goodbye?” 

Dean shakes his head miserably. “I couldn’t. I can’t ever say goodbye to you.”

A long moment of silence passes. Dean’t not sure how long, but he feels Cas’s hand on his knee, warm and firm, and he feels safe. He thinks then that he’d be content to stay here indefinitely, staring into that blue that feels like home.

“Promise me you won’t do that again,” Cas finally whispers. 

Dean sighs.

“Please.” There’s a note of desperation in Cas’s voice now. “Don’t leave me. Not like that.”

Dean smirks. "Missed me that much, huh?"

"I can't go through it again." Cas says solemnly, and Dean sobers quickly.

He leans forward and rests his forehead against Cas’s. “Promise me the same and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

Exhaustion sets in and the rest is a blur for Dean. But when he wakes up the next morning, rested, warm, and snuggled deep into his mattress that still remembers him six weeks later, he doesn’t wake up alone. He rolls over to see Cas sitting fully clothed on the other side of the bed, legs stretched out, and a book delicately balanced in his lap. 

Cas looks down at him, fondly but a little nervously. “You uh.. you didn’t want me to leave. I said I could watch over you and um…” he trails off, clearly unsure of himself. 

Dean smiles his first real smile since going to prison and snuggles in deeper.


End file.
